Power.com Offers One-Stop Shop for Social Networking

Ok, let me first start off by saying, Power.com is awesome! What is it? Power.com is a one stop shop for social networking and instant messaging. Think about it this way: with Power.com you have the ability to navigate and use Myspace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, MSN is live. Yahoo Messenger, AIM, and soon Gtalk, all at the same time.

Today Power.com will attempt to reach out to an American audience for the first time, since this Brazilian based startup first caught the attention of funding powerhouses Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Esther Dyson. And I am willing to bet that its going to go over very well.

Consolidating Web 2.0 services is a hot trend at the moment with companies and tools such as pidgin and friendfeed helping manage a barrage of different networks and protocols.

Now don’t get me wrong despite my initial positive reaction, I do see some areas of improvement, therefore let me break it down for you.

PROS:

Extremely easy to use: Unlike most social networking gizmos, this one doesn’t require registration. When a new user visits the site they are asked for their login information to one of their accounts at either Myspace, Facebook, Hi5, or Orkut. And that’s it, there’s no registration form or account authorization required.

Everything in one place: The site’s dashboard allows for users to view most recent messages, friends, and status updates. It is also very easy to hop from network to network, or merge them all together in one.

CONS:

Cluttered Layout: The dashboard has a slightly cluttered layout. To a certain extent this can not be avoided when a tool aggregates data from multiple services. However, they could do a better job at consolidating menu options. However it should be noted that one really cool feature is that they are employing a drag-able dashboard like the famous iGoogle functions.

Dashboard Color: Ok, I know that this is probably more of a matter of preference. But, honestly every good marketer knows that orange is a “hot” color that often times evokes subconscious emotional triggers. Warning, fear, and distress are all emotions associated with hot colors. Think about the “cool” blues of MySpace and Facebook, or the neutral white space from Google. Those are inviting and relaxing colors that encourage users to return.

I think Power.com has a potentially bright future for itself. However, if it plans to evolve to compete with the ever expanding social web then it must constantly work to integrate new platforms and services that will empower its users, they are off to a good start.

To me this is one of those instances where I wish someone would have developed a stand alone app and not a browser based tool. I don’t like the idea of using a browser for which is notorious for memory leak issues as the platform for an always on communications solution. I find tremendous advantages to using something like iChat or Adium for messaging over anything browser based, specifically that it can run in the background and use minimal resources until it actually is needed. Some things a browser is just not up to task for yet.

I suppose it’s a good idea, but I’ve stopped using myspace and have been using facebook exclusively.
It would be great to have one place to check all of your updates you received today or in the last hour. They need to add twitter as soon as possible.

I agree with Terry. Although i would also ask how big the audience is for this kind of thing. Although the attention hungry will register on as many social networking sites as they can, they tend to gravitate towards a couple which meet their needs best I believe. And is visiting and managing different identities on, say, Facebook and YouTube really such hard work?

And how does Power.com plan to keep on top of the myriad nich networks that will most likely drive the next wave of social networking?

I’d also say it’s a shame a social media launch page of this type hasn’t also incorporated single sign on with any clever way of managing a single, shared social graph which you can then easily re-use on the destination sites.

It’s neat-ish I guess — the name is cool — but it doesn’t do enough new to give it great appeal.

Well, industry really needs something that will connect all social networks to help normal users as much as possible. Power looks like a such a idea, so we are left so see if they will make good realization, and will they be capable to connect ALL networks together for real.